The battle of narratives
In war, truth is the first casualty. — Aeschylus
Today has been yet another day of discovery for me. Earlier in the day, in a closed group of friends that I belong to, one of us was lamenting losses incurred in his farm to cattle encroachment. After hearing his story, and empathising, I put up one of his pictures on my social media pages. And then the storm began.
Assorted supporters of the current government began buzzing me, and calling me a liar. Then two interesting claims came up.
First, there was the one who claimed that the farm belonged to him, then there was the one who said, all rice farms in Orumba were harvested in December. He would go on to say that rice takes three months from planting to harvesting, a claim that three different rice farmers I’ve spoken to this evening have said is false. Rice, according to them, takes about seven months.
Now, as a matter of policy, I typically don’t respond to social media barbs because I’ve learned that they are effective ways of derailing a conversation. But my closest friend, @texazzpete told me quite bluntly — guy, this one, if you allow them to crystallise the narrative they are trying to push, your reputation will be burned.
I’ll be honest, that statement rattled me a little, especially because he was right. A certain crew had begun to use those tweets to attack my integrity. So I picked up the phone and called Uche. He provided me an even more detailed explanation of all that had been happening in the farm for over a month, then the nugget that they’d reported to the police, and nothing had happened.
I told the story, and then one of Uche’s people actually provided not just more pix, but a video as well.
So, what has happened?
Asides from two people who have apologised, what we have seen is people from that crew digging in on the earlier accusations, and some others simply ignoring the evidence before them and moving on. One actually went so far as to delete the tweet where he called me names. But was not honourable enough to even acknowledge that he’d erred.
Does it matter? Not to me personally, but to the coming election season it does. It also matters to our psyche.
You see, I have twice been caught out on social media in a lie. Both were cases where I retold a story without bothering to crosscheck. On both cases, as soon as I was caught out, I apologised. I never deleted either tweet, because for me, they are a lesson that I’m fallible. Each time I put out stuff, I try, sometimes obsessively to find out the vercity before putting it out. If I get it wrong, I’ll always own up. When people fail to own up to their wrongs, they will, as a matter of course, do more wrong. That is one of the problems with the Buhari regime. No one ever owns up to anything, so they keep making more errors. It’s clear to me that their followers are like them.
What this evening’s fun and games prove is that we are in a war of narratives. People, especially the President’s supporters, are going to say anything, do anything, to paint perceived opponents in a negative light, and as some of today’s tweets showed, try to send the security agencies after them.
It matters not that someone’s investment has been ruined. It matters not that in the real world people are dying. It matters not that Nigeria is on the path to a major food crisis. What matters is the narrative. And in that narrative, anyone who criticises Saint Buhari is fair game for all sorts of attack.
People, please get your PVCs.
